Another request to ID story...

[duhast]

Greetings from SoCal.

I'm 57, and read some Lovecraft in high school. It creeped me out a bit then, but recently I've read some more....

I remember part of a story from back then. I've skimmed some paperbacks but haven't found it.

What stuck with me was being below a house, and there being a old well that "things" were coming out of, and I think maybe they were shaped sort of like short squat cones, though I could be wrong about that.

My main memory is the ancient-hidden-well-as-portal, the narrators fear of the creatures and their advancing movements.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Ningauble]

Greetings from SoCal.

I'm 57, and read some Lovecraft in high school. It creeped me out a bit then, but recently I've read some more....

I remember part of a story from back then. I've skimmed some paperbacks but haven't found it.

What stuck with me was being below a house, and there being a old well that "things" were coming out of, and I think maybe they were shaped sort of like short squat cones, though I could be wrong about that.

My main memory is the ancient-hidden-well-as-portal, the narrators fear of the creatures and their advancing movements.

Thanks in advance.

That sounds vaguely like "The Shadow Out of Time", where the narrator at one point is in a prehuman city in ruins, and finds an open trapdoor out of which something has emerged. The creatures who built the city were shaped like cones.

OR

you might be thinking of "Pickman's Model", although those creatures weren't cone-shaped.

 

[j d worthington]

What strikes me here is that it seems a conflation of several different stories. "The Shadow Out of Time" is one -- the cone-shaped beings (though in Lovecraft's tale they aren't short or squat); the well could be "Pickman's Model", or the cellar/basement/well could be "The Lurking Fear". At any rate, hope the suggestions in these posts give you some help in tracking it down... and if you do, let us know which story it was -- or, for that matter, if it was a story by someone else based on HPL's mythos....

 

[ghyle]

The well could also be a factor in "The Colour out of Space" as well: it appears, from a cursory reading, that the well or abyss was a common motif in Granda theobald's fiction. (Don't forget that the well also crops up in the Fungi sonnets as well.)

 

[duhast]

I'm reading The Lurking Fear and Other Stories now,

* The Lurking Fear
* Dagon
* Beyond the Wall of Sleep
* The White Ship
* Arthur Jermyn
* From Beyond
* The Temple
* The Moon-Bog
* The Hound
* The Unnamable
* The Outsider
* The Shadow Over Innsmouth

and it's not in this collection (though I have not finished Shadow over Innsmouth yet).

 

[j d worthington]

It's certainly not part of that story.... The reason I mentioned the possibility of it being by someone else is that the Great Race (the cone-shaped beings) are also used by Derleth in the "posthumous collaboration" (read: story written by Derleth based on a line or two -- or even a hint of an idea -- by Lovecraft) "The Dark Brotherhood"....

 

[duhast]

It's certainly not part of that story.... The reason I mentioned the possibility of it being by someone else is that the Great Race (the cone-shaped beings) are also used by Derleth in the "posthumous collaboration" (read: story written by Derleth based on a line or two -- or even a hint of an idea -- by Lovecraft) "The Dark Brotherhood"....

I don't have wide experience with this type of story. The "horror" genre is not what I usually read. I read a lot of Sci-Fi in school, but it was Clarke, Heinlein, Bradbury, et al.

 

[j d worthington]

I don't have wide experience with this type of story. The "horror" genre is not what I usually read. I read a lot of Sci-Fi in school, but it was Clarke, Heinlein, Bradbury, et al.

I'm not quite seeing the connection here to my post... perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes. What I was getting at is the scene (or something similar to it) you describe isn't in the "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"; but parts of what you describe keep making me think of the story "The Dark Brotherhood", which was part of a paperback collection published as "by H. P. Lovecraft [in rather large type] and August Derleth [in much smaller type]", leading one to think the stories were largely by HPL, when they weren't -- hence, if this was the story you read, you'd almost certainly remember it as being by HPL when it actually wasn't. (I believe it's only recently that these stories are no longer being released in this fashion; perhaps in some cases they still are.)

At any rate, I hope you find the right story and, if you wouldn't mind, letting us know if you do so... I'm more than a little curious as to which it is....

 

[kaelcarp]

I'll just chime in to say that the cone-shaped things could really only be the creatures in Shadow Out of Time. I don't know of anything else that would fit that description in a Lovecraft story. I'd say give that story a shot. It's one of his best anyway.

 

[duhast]

I'm not quite seeing the connection here to my post... perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes. What I was getting at is the scene (or something similar to it) you describe isn't in the "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"; but parts of what you describe keep making me think of the story "The Dark Brotherhood", which was part of a paperback collection published as "by H. P. Lovecraft [in rather large type] and August Derleth [in much smaller type]", leading one to think the stories were largely by HPL, when they weren't -- hence, if this was the story you read, you'd almost certainly remember it as being by HPL when it actually wasn't. (I believe it's only recently that these stories are no longer being released in this fashion; perhaps in some cases they still are.)

At any rate, I hope you find the right story and, if you wouldn't mind, letting us know if you do so... I'm more than a little curious as to which it is....

Ah...I see. I suppose that is possible. I will also explore that path....